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player ready...“Naked Dancers: Peep Show, $20 for 1/2 Hour”
“X-Treme Body Massages with ‘Hotties'”
“Hot, Wild, Fun — Blonde or Brunette?”
Ads that ran in Wednesday’s sports section of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Awwww, isn’t it sweet of the Sun-Times to go to bat against Ozzie Guillen’s bad language and the sexism of the White Sox?
My friend Elliott Harris’ column ran on a Sun-Times sports page Wednesday with photographs of supermodel Gisele Bundchen in a backless dress and a pair of Playboy Playmates with deep cleavage and bunny ears.
Richard Roeper, one of my favorite columnists, concluded his Wednesday column in the Sun-Times with a headline he found on a Web site: “Scarlett Johansson is Engaged, Busty.”
“Sometimes the headline really does tell us all we need to know,” Roeper wrote.
It sure does, Rich.
That’s why I was tickled pink to find a huge headline screaming from Tuesday’s front page of the Sun-Times in all caps: “SOX DOLL BLOW UP.”
Plus lots of valuable insight inside the Sun-Times over the next two days on why the White Sox need to clean up their act.
As a feminist, I love it that the Sun-Times is setting such a fine example for those bad-boy White Sox to follow.
Gloria Steinem must be the new editor over there. I mean, isn’t it great to see the Sun-Times scolding the White Sox this way for offending women?
You know, while the paper runs sex-club ads and sexy photos of non-athletes in the sports section?
I can see why those dirty, dirty White Sox would respect the wishes of the Sun-Times to keep things clean.
After all, imagine the nerve of the Sox, doing something naughty in the privacy of their own dressing room.
Where the public is not allowed.
Where children are forbidden.
Where no one without a pass may see what you are doing in there … as opposed to, say, ads and pictures in a newspaper that any child in any home could pick up.
Gosh, isn’t it swell of the Sun-Times to take the Sox to task for having a blow-up doll inside their clubhouse in Toronto, where any easily offended adult journalist from Canada could walk in at any given minute?
“Sensitivity training” was one of the things the White Sox obviously need, according to the Sun-Times, the home of ads like this one in its Tuesday’s sports pages:
“2 Girls — At Once! Feel the Youth.”
Schoolgirlfun.com took out that ad. I guess it must be part of a Sun-Times campaign to support girls doing their homework together for school.
Or:
“Tuesdays! 2 for 1!”
That one in the Sun-Times sports section ran with a silhouette image of two women facing one another, one of them standing, one not. I guess it could have been for an aerobics class where you can get two lessons for the price of one.
Bravo to the Bright One for making sure no one out there is offended by sex or dirty talk.
I am sure that the Sox’s profane manager, Guillen — a baseball man who cusses, imagine that! — will want to follow the good example set by the Sun-Times for a wholesome family image that won’t offend your eyes and ears.
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Look, we’re no angels. From time to time the Tribune has been known to run a story that offends readers, and writers and editors have no say if ads appear for adult-themed products.
But if you are going to condemn a baseball team and its manager for offending the public’s taste, then your own house better be squeaky clean. Particularly if your own very public publication trades in highly provocative material and language, as does the Sun-Times in its articles and ads.
You know, like the paper did in its comprehensive coverage of that big Page 1 story, the White Sox with a blow-up doll.
Remember, what the White Sox did, they did in private, for almost no outsider to see.
But what the Sun-Times wrote appeared in public, for every man, woman and child of greater Chicago to see.
It was the top story in Tuesday’s paper, played above that day’s Indiana primary election between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Innocent eyes got to see the Sun-Times’ front page that day, including this charming passage in large type: “The Sox placed bats around two blow-up sex dolls with a sign that read ‘You’ve got to push.'”
I suppose no kids look at the Sun-Times, so it’s safe.
Jerry Reinsdorf, Kenny Williams and the rest of the White Sox can rest assured the Sun-Times will continue to set a good example of the kind of decency and integrity that should be commonplace in public.
No doubt churches and schools will want to salute the Sun-Times every day for never running a dirty ad or a sexist image of a woman.
After all, the Sun-Times is looking out for women — the hotter the better — every single day.
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